BELMAR — A state investigation into alleged corruption by the borough’s mayor has concluded with no charges, but his political rival who filed the initial complaint said he already has refiled it with another agency.

A letter, dated April 8, to Mayor Matt Doherty from the Attorney General’s Division of Criminal Justice states the division has “closed its file” on allegations that a contract for clean up of superstorm Sandy debris was improperly awarded. The letter is signed by Anthony Picione, who leads the division’s corruption bureau.

“As I stated back when Councilman Jim Bean filed these baseless and politically motivated allegations, I followed the directions of our borough attorney to remove even the appearance of a conflict of interest,” Doherty said in a statement Thursday.

Belmar signed two contracts with AshBritt Environmental, the first in November 2012 for $1.6 million and a second $2.6-million deal in February, to supervise debris removal in the borough.

Maggie Moran, Doherty's wife, helped market Florida-based AshBritt to government officials throughout New Jersey. After receiving a $100 million state debris-removal contract in late October, AshBritt then hired a construction firm known as Conti Group of Edison to manage its efforts and identify local subcontractors. Conti hired Moran, a former top aide to former Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, to develop a marketing campaign.

Doherty has maintained he and his wife were not involved in Belmar’s decision to sign AshBritt to a no-bid contract, which was legal because of the emergency situation created by Sandy.

In May 2013, Bean, a Republican who is now running for mayor, wrote a letter to the state Department of Community Affairs Local Finance Board detailing what he perceived as a conflict of interest. He requested a formal investigation to determine whether Doherty, a Democrat, and Moran received additional financial compensation for hiring AshBritt, according to the letter.

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An August 2013 letter from the DCA to Doherty informs the mayor that their ethics investigation had been forwarded to the Attorney General’s Statewide Sandy Fraud Working Group. A spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office said Wednesday that it is their policy to neither confirm nor deny information on any investigation unless charges are filed as a result.

The DCA’s letter states Bean or someone else would need to file another ethics complaint at the conclusion of the Attorney General’s investigation if they wanted the DCA to look into the propriety of Belmar’s deal with AshBritt. Bean was unaware Thursday that the Attorney General’s probe had finished.

“Now that I know, it will be done by the end of the day,” Bean said.

Thirty minutes later, Bean emailed a copy of a letter to the Asbury Park Press that he said he already had mailed to the DCA, asking that his complaint be resubmitted.

The AshBritt saga aside, debris removal in Belmar has been a particularly messy affair.

The borough is being sued by a debris-removal contractor who was fired shortly before AshBritt was hired to handle those duties. A recently released federal audit recommended FEMA withhold $523,000 in disaster aid from Belmar because it structured two debris-removal deals in a way that could be used to maximize taxpayer expense for the benefit of those contractors. Doherty has previously addressed those complaints, saying the lawsuit is without merit and FEMA signed off on the deals in question.